Gaming Disorder to be named a Mental Health Condition

[retrolinkx]

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/...21876.html

I'd put this in Gaming News, but I feel it'd be better to have a thread about it for more discussion.

Personally, I think it's stupid. Gaming Addiction is one thing and I can understand that, but making it a mental health condition is just stupid. I'm not the kind of person to really look into mental health conditions though, so maybe I don't know enough to truly understand what angle they're working with here.

What's your take on this?

[CLXcool]

Must be a slow news day if they have to resort this.

[RepentantSky]

Here's my thing on this, addiction is addiction and yes, some people have the tendency to become addicted to video games, that's a part of what the whole loot box debate has been about, but and with that in mind, it does seem odd to classify game addiction as something different than other addictions. The tendencies of someone who is addicted to games, seems to me to be pretty similar to the tendencies of someone addicted to any kind of media, so I don't get the point in classifying it as someone different. If the argument becomes, "well it's because of loot boxes" than it's a gambling addiction so there's again not much of a reason to classify it as anything different.

[Arjahn]

The article they linked is really funny, it starts as a "gaming addiction is bad mmk" piece that says hey maybe spending 12+ hours a day playing videogames isn't healthy, then goes on to talk about how gamers don't enable windows security on their systems???

Then you look at the URL and oh hey it's a cyber security website that has nothing to do with videogames or addiction, nice.

RepentantSky hit it on the head, Videogame addiction's a real problem in the vein of Alcoholism and Gambling issues, but it's sort of strange that the WHO is very specifically adding this to the ICD. Especially when literally every other result for addiction on the current ICD turns up Drugs and one thing of Hypnotism.